I am meat for my journey.                                               

This canoe made of birch

and ancestors’ bones,

is laden with mystery

and fleece, apples

and rye bread,

friends’ voices shining

(these here those gone),

stuffed with supplies

for northern nights

when grenades of stars

blast their loud love

in skies toward forever,

as we glide in silence

one flashing moment

on a cerulean lake

deep with sorrow unsaid

and gladness serene,

breath of our fathers and mothers,

through clear waters thick mud
meanders this voyage.

             SOLSTICE 

 

The hawk circles high overhead.

 

Again and again she glides and

floats in the open sky above me

like the soul of a friend or a new/

found poem.

 

I call out to her raucously tumbling

stumbling down from the mountain

peak on this day of the Winter Solstice

when darkness overcomes light.

 

I’m exhilarated half-crazed, wild

with grief and hope and this unplanned

embodied bravery, this wholehearted

descent towards bottom.

 

Yet the silent beauty of this solitary winged

creature, regal and pure in late afternoon’s

spacious coolness, the diffuse oranges and

yellows of the setting sun, these many angled

 

hunks of granite rock I clamber easily on

over around and down this steep enfolding

slope, and yes, these bright newborn

surprises, Winter’s paradox—tender green

blades of grass—are held within a soft haze

 

of marine air, a diaphanous invitation

from beyond, oozing in slowly from

the distant coast. I kneel here on muddy

ground and pray ‘yes’ and ‘thanks’

 

for this day and all who inhabit its shine

and shadow as I fall further and quietly,

now nearly breathless in my own animal

earthen circling, homewards toward a cup

 

of coffee and comforting warmth, as she the sudden

visitor, ethereal and so real, Winter’s auburn herald,

disappears northwards into a final immensity.

The Beautiful Mundane

HIT MAN

                                                             
Floyd's grin outshone
his orange umbrella and two-tone
saddle shoes, the job was rewarding
these days and the hours even


better, strolling, no strutting, along
Fifth Avenue on this breezy, drizzly
Fall Saturday he was Hillary triumphal
on top of infinite Everest,


Berra crouched low chuckling to himself
behind Yankee Stadium’s home plate,
Captain Cook standing tall
on the sensual white beaches
of Tahiti,


and he knew in his hidden Beretta
and swollen silver money belt
that life for all its vexations
and occasional honest cop
was good, hell, real good, all the way
down to the bone.


Turning onto Twenty-Fourth
and into the small quiet shop
just off the corner, he shot the jeweler
with the gambling habit once
through the throat, carefully wiped


fingerprints with a clean handkerchief,
stepped out to the happy sidewalk
and an Autumn afternoon refreshed
by a good day’s work towards uptown


where he treated his freckled daughter
to a strawberry shake and plate heaped
with crisp fries at her favorite malt shop
after the double feature.

                                                   Rumination                                                                       

Six or seven kids circle and slice the manicured yard incessantly on red

and silver trikes buzz-bombing each other, occasionally crashing into adults

perimetered like prison guards ensconced in bullet-proof watchtowers,

either too numb, distracted or just brave enough to sit more or less

non-plussed sipping mai-tais and martinis with lips pursed, making talk so small

the manic tykes look tall as they murder this once-perfect lawn. Mosquitos

in squat human bodies flit and bite and irritate, tear at exposed flesh,

circulate in standing water of stagnant disappointments.

 

The brain sometimes is a gang of feral children uncaged, driving unlicensed

vehicles with paltry brakes, a tropical rainstorm of pelting thoughts pounding

the skull’s slick inside like a cord of coconuts, a maniacal film noir marathon

in a tawdry theater with torn seats and a sagging screen, a cauldron of insomniac

brats and frenetic bugs blasted on methamphetamine and jars of clover honey.

Clumsy strangers dressed in recurring anxieties and inert regrets dance in an empty

lot stumbling over crushed beer cans and Chinese food take-out containers.

 

And yet, all that’s really needed for relief from such onslaughts, for some equanimity, is one

blue pause, a pond somewhere in a remembered meadow for this crevassed bundle of cauliflower

tissue, for these wayward youth to float in, and afterwards a languid back-stroke in mid-day

sunshine—cerebellum pacing itself leads the way for hippocampus and neocortex as they feel the water

quiet their ragged voices, calm their anguished axons and disturbed dendrites, later after the swim

all the lobes might gather on a warm shore to loaf and savor the tricyclers’ surprise, a lullaby sung

by a chorus of hell’s little angels,  thank the gods—they’re finally tired—in the rising moonlight.

'BRIDGE'

'PENETRATION' acrylic on canvas 60"x48"

Copy of 'Seated Nude From Behind' (Gerhard Richter)---pencil, pen, ink